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Ben Wheatley Claims A Field In England

The Kill List director's new project

The director of last year's Kill List and this year's Sightseers has announced that his next project, A Field In England, has been picked up by Film4.0, and will precede his other announced film, Freakshift.

Set during the English Civil War, it sees Kill List's Michael Smiley and Sightseers' Richard Glover joined by The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith and The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt - as well as Peter Ferdinando and Ryan Pope - in playing a group of deserters on a hunt for treasure in 1648.

Smiley will play the lead, O'Neil, an alchemist who wants the ragtag group of reprobates he's just captured to help him find the gold he believes is buried in one particular English field.

On their way to the treasure, they consume a quantity of rather powerful fungi that makes the arguing soldiers feel something rather... disturbing, and, as the press release would have it, puts them on a "psychedelic trip into magic and madness."

Wheatley himself describes it as "a project that we have been talking about for years and are very excited about making. It brings together the more psychedelic elements of Kill List and Sightseers and weaves in our take on historical drama."

Unlike Sightseers, which was written by its stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, A Field In England sees a return to the Kill List set-up of Wheatley on scripting duties with Amy Jump.

There is no earmarked date for A Field In England's release, but by the looks of Wheatley's output, 2013 looks like a decent bet.